Florrie

Pop only rarely goes according to plan and rather good pop often comes along when plans go fantastically wrong, but sometimes the best pop - the pop that makes you feel a bit wobbly and excited and presses all the buttons only pop can really press - happens when there has been no plan at all. It happens when one happy accident leads to another and the end result takes everyone by surprise, and 2011’s biggest surprise is 21-year-old Florrie: as traditional a musician and performer as can possibly be, but at the same time a completely new type of independent pop artist.

In an era when career progression seems measured in one’s ability to get to the end of a song without a red cross buzzing to life above your head, Florrie has quietly, but surely, created her own space, defined her own style and nailed her own identity, and if you think that sounds good on paper wait until you hear it at top volume.

Florrie’s bold, attention-grabbing pop music that’s at once robotic and human, chunky and svelte, is big on ideas and not shy of explosive choruses. One of the best things about all this is that she’s making it up as she goes along; after all, if pop’s continued evolution is one of its most thrilling attributes, does it not make sense that pop stars should shapeshift too?

Some of all this success is down to luck and some of it’s simply down to hard work, but a lot of it’s down to Florrie being just a little bit amazing.